NOTE: I met Mr. Krammer almost 10 years ago while on my "Mecca" trip to Green Bay. I ran into him three times in one week and I found him charming, witty, and extremely willing to chat with fans... have his picture taken... sign autographs... and drink my beer (I bought him and several other Packers' alumni a couple rounds at Fuzzy's Bar Shenanigans).

To Jerry Kramer, his original Super Bowl I ring isn’t everything. It’s the only thing, or at least, the only one of its kind.

“Its greatest significance is that it was Super Bowl I,” he said Friday from his home in Boise, Idaho. “You can get excited about Super Bowl XV or Super Bowl XXV or Super Bowl XXXV, but there’s nothing like the first one.”

That is why Kramer was deeply saddened when the ring was stolen more than 20 years ago, and why he was outraged Friday to discover it was for sale on a Chicago-based auction house’s Web site. It’s also why he was thrilled when Mastro Auctions, who opened the bidding at $5,000, promptly removed the ring from its site after being contacted by Kramer.

“It’s a fantastic piece,” said Doug Allen, president of Mastro Auctions. “The bidding was at $20,000 when we withdrew it, and I’m sure it would’ve gotten crazy tonight but we wouldn’t let it get to that point.”

Mastro Auctions, the largest sports auction house in the world, according to Allen, is going to work through the consigner to authenticate the ring and try to return it to Kramer. “It’s a Super Bowl ring from one of the most prominent teams ever that was owned by a famous personality who also is a great guy,” Allen said. “I wish I could’ve sold it, but given the fact that (Kramer) claims he never sold it and that it was stolen, we’re going to take the high road.”

Kramer, 70, was delighted at the possibility of having his long lost ring returned. “It’s nice to know there are good people out there willing to do the right thing,” he said. Kramer, who starred at right guard for coach Vince Lombardi’s championship teams of the 1960s, first learned the ring was up for auction when he received a Friday morning phone call from John Nitschke. The son of Ray Nitschke, the Packers’ Hall of Fame middle linebacker, refused to believe his deceased father’s former teammate and friend would sell his Super Bowl I ring. “He said, ‘I see your Super Bowl I ring is up for sale. My dad would never have sold his ring, and I’m pretty damn sure you’d never sell yours, either,’” Kramer said. “Hearing from John was one of the few nice things that happened as a result of this. Now that there’s a chance I may get it back, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am.”

Matter of minutes

Kramer lost the ring while he was aboard a flight from Chicago to New York in the early 1980s. “I went into the restroom, washed my hands afterwards, and with slippery soapy hands the ring slides off so I set it on the edge of the sink. I dry my hands and forget to pick it up. I get back to my seat — honest to God — not a minute or two later, and I realize it and jump back up, run to the restroom and it’s not there.”

Kramer told the flight attendants, who informed the captain, who promptly went on the public-address system to announce that a very valuable ring was missing. “Nobody shows,” Kramer said. “They get back on the PA again and again and again. Finally a person comes up and claims to be a psychic, and says, ‘Look, I’m a psychic. I can see your ring in a little lady’s pocketbook. A little gray-haired lady, she has it wrapped in a handkerchief.’ Of course I start going up and down the aisle, looking for such a lady, and I can’t find her. “I hang around after the flight lands, just standing there with my face hanging, looking at everybody coming off but no one says anything. I anticipated the possibility of a ransom for a while, but as the years went by I figured it was locked away somewhere.”

Kramer had lost hope until last week. That’s when a man telephoned from Canada and told Kramer he might know the whereabouts of his Super Bowl I ring. The man declined to give his name, but he and Kramer compared notes and it quickly became apparent the ring was authentic.

“I’ve been waiting for this thing to resurface for a long time, and I knew it would, but I expected it to happen a lot sooner,” he said. “I replaced the ring through Jostens, but it’s still not the original. The man that called last week said I might be hearing about the ring in the near future, and then I got the call from John (Nitschke) this morning.” Kramer said it ticks him off that he has to explain to people that he’d never sell the ring. “It’s part of our family,” he said. “My children and I have had those discussions the last couple of years. They said, ‘Don’t ever sell it,’ and I feel the same way.”

Image improvement

Kramer said Mastro’s decision to discontinue the bidding can only improve the image of the whole sports memorabilia craze. “Memorabilia certainly is a way for fans to participate in the game and have a relationship with the players, but in a way that whole thing has hurt the fan-player relationship,” he said. “It’s no longer a pleasant thing to get an autograph from a player. Often times it’s ‘get in line, pay your buck, do your thing.’ We can’t go to the Lombardi golf tournament and sign for kids anymore because the collectors pay kids to get the autographs. The whole thing has been bastardized and in a lot of ways it’s been ruined.”

Allen didn’t disagree.

“We’re in an industry that has a black eye right now,” he said. “These real sports stories about bad autographs hurt, and we’ve always held ourselves to higher standards than some other (collectors) might. I’m not going to sell the ring when (Kramer) says it’s lost or stolen. We’ll put it in our safe and when we can authenticate it he’ll get it back.”

Kramer said he would like to hear from anyone that has information regarding the ring. They can contact him at www.jerrykramer.com. “I’d love to trace the ring from the day it was stolen until today,” he said. “That would be a terrific tale.”

It already is.

0 CommentsPublished by PackerPundit
On Saturday, April 22, 2006 at 11:54 AM.